What Keeps CEOs Up At Night

CEOs today have more concerns and worries than even in the history of corporate america.  these concerns dominate their daily thinking and, correspondingly their spending.

if you are in the service business today your imperative is to align your service offerings and marketing materials with these issues.  want to get a CEO's attention, then align your offerings with two or three of these issues at the same time.

as with anything, CEO issues change over time which means that you will have to be flexible to morph your offerings as the imperatives change.  but for now, focus on these which are presented with equal priority. the "applicability" column is for you to fill in based upon how these issues apply to your service offerings.

We Live In A Networked World -- So Network

Strategy Becomes More Complex

Medical Ice Burgs

i have spent a lot of time recently in the medical arena.  wow; i know of no other industry or value space of such size and mass (inertia) that is undergoing such profound change.

• data turned into wisdom is becoming a critical component of success
• new entrants are entering the field every day -- from app providers to roadside clinics, personal device makers, to healthcare advisers (similar to financial planners in the investment field)
• vertically integrated providers are struggling with cost, overhead, obtaining and keeping quality professionals, and overall complexity

the industry is fragmenting like a large iceberg that that begins to break into multiple smaller pieces. lets look at the pieces individually.

vertically integrated providers (general hospitals) are suffering from more restrictive government payments and subsidies, more knowledgeable patients who no longer say "ok" to all, increased complexity, and a hierarchical cost structure that could very possibly sink them.  on top of that they are churning physicians and other professional staff in record numbers and really don't yet know how to turn data into insight and then into knowledge and wisdom.

complexity alone could easily sink any of these institutions that have less than stellar management. there are four basic races of people in the world with over 30 subgroups -- all with varying DNA, genetics and epigenetics. combine that with two sexes, eight decades of life, and over 20,000 known diseases and the operational complexity of a general hospital becomes unmanageable by definition. general hospitals will have no choice but to rethink their business models.

another piece of the iceberg is the cadre of walk in clinics with Chinese menus of services and the emergency clinics that seem to be popping up everywhere.  both of these are pulling enlightened patients away from general hospitals and general practice physicians.  the marketspace for emergency clinics is following the model of many new start up industries; that of progressing from new, to hot, to overheated, and then to consolidation.  once consolidation occurs, the marketspace will be much more effective and potent as a tool of restructuring the valuespace.

another piece of the iceberg is the personal medical device space and app providers.  these providers who may seem harmless now, will begin to eat away at both prior segments of the medical services space.  they will begin to selectively take much profitable business away from the vertically integrated general hospitals and the walk in and emergency clinics.

the very ground that the medical industry is standing on is shaking (or the iceberg is melting) -- and that is just the beginning of the earthquake to come.

scenario planning, war gaming, effective technology leverage, data analytics, and calculated risk taking and management are the tools of the future of healthcare.

remember everyone has data -- but few have insight and wisdom.

data is useless unless it can be turned into information

information is useless unless it can be turned into knowledge

knowledge is useless unless it can be turned into industry focused insight and wisdom

the walls are down.  there is no more medical industry -- there is just an industry "value space" with few barriers to entry where any company can play and any company can quickly take market share.

It's Not a Technology War

most businesses today think that they are in a technology war; implementing one technology after another in support of competitiveness and market share.

basically that's true for average, run of the mill businesses that lack a real information technology vision and strategy -- and also often lack the will to win.

but if you are not average and you want to dominate your market space, it is not a technology war that you're in; but a strategy war.

leading edge companies don't think about individual technologies (especially operationally focused ones) but think about information technology strategy holistically as a change agent to transform the whole of the company

a strategy like i am speaking of has many parts, but from a bird's eye view it has two principal parts;  information assets (divided into information domains based upon source, usage, and security) and operational flows (based upon technology but not individual technologies -- integrated technologies as a holistic operational system of competitive advantage).

to be digitally mature an organization must must be employing its technology strategy to transform its core processes, talent and recruiting, and business creation and delivery models.  any individual use of technology is just a feel good measure for management and will only lead to average results.

Who Knows What

Who Knows What

ok, so you are the CEO of a significant company and as a business driver and professional employee perk you give everyone a cell phone.  they can use the phones for business and occasionally for personal needs

so what does that "use" mean?  it means that apps will be downloaded from Apple, Google and others and used most every day on the phone.

so what does the downloading and use of apps mean for the business -- this is a complicated question. some terms of use legal agreements for apps run from 3000 to 35,000 words;  you know in your heart that no one reads them -- what does that mean for your company?

• by using LinkedIn you are granting them access to any information you have ever listed on the site -- do you know what you professionals are placing on LinkedIn
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• many apps always know where you are through geo location -- even in secret business meetings or with potential merger candidates
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• Instagram gains the right to sell names, images, and photographs to advertisers -- photos and images can even be sold as stock images for advertisers -- any business photos of new products or prospective advertising here
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• anybody who uses Google docs to upload a spreadsheet or other document grants ownership of the document to Google -- possibly your business documents
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• Android operating systems provide Google with your mobile phone number, network information, device storage data, call logs, and contact lists
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• some apps can also listen in on your phone calls for ambient information and background noise which can be sold or used for advertising
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• with some apps you grant permission for the parent to take pictures and videos with your camera, to read your text messages, and to upload every photo image on the phone

your private business information and even the locations of your employee meetings are leaking out each and every day.  this information is for sale to anyone who has the money and the interest.

think a coherent information security session and plan isn't important -- think again.  it is now a core component of your business strategy.

Layered Networks

small businesses, smart homes, and other enterprises with video cameras or other network attached devices need to think about layered networks.

it has already been shown multiple times that network access from outside the business or home can fairly easily be gained through smart cameras, network connected thermostats, and other network attached devices -- even those primarily used for security purposes.

now that a number of used smart devices are easily available in the public marketplace, the issue becomes even more acute.  smart thermostats, cameras, and smoke detectors are easy to modify and set to provide external network access to the home or business.  wouldn't it be just great if a thief could see everything in your home or business before deciding whether to break in or not?  how about if they gained access to your intellectual capital ( IC) through a device that was designed to assist with security.

many companies now are moving or thinking of moving to layered network architectures:

• one network for external internet (interactive) connectivity by employees or family members
• one network for internal communications of intellectual capital or other proprietary information -- no external connectivity
• one network for security or other network connected infrastructure devices

and never the twain shall meet!

we all need to consider layering, even for our private homes -- especially as we add more and more network connected devices for our security(??)  and convenience.  most products available to us have two faces; dr. jekyll and mr. hyde.

buyer beware!

Just came from a community meeting on the future of Charleston, SC; with many politicians and constituent groups each with a particular agenda to promote.  The most commonly heard phrases in the meeting were “a fork in the road for Charleston” and “planning”.

Yes, we as Charleston citizens are facing a fork in the road, but so is each and every one of us every day of our lives, including our City.  Significant differences are less often made by monumental decisions, but more often by the collection of our daily decisions, just as a beautiful necklace is made by a collection of individual pearls.

If Charleston allows itself to be mired in endless requirements discussions and planning cycles, it will likely end up as a second tier, bureaucratically managed, declining city.

Instead, lets become the Google, Amazon, or Apple of cities.  Let’s harvest our best three to five ideas each year to make Charleston an even greater city and allot small budgets (relative to project magnitude) to prototype our ideas and, if productive, innovate the best ones into our future.  Those that don’t pan out are scrapped with relatively small losses compared to what could have been incurred with massive City-wide projects.  Prototypes help us all see the possibilities of the future.  How many of us knew that we needed the iPhone before we saw it as a product and understood the possibilities that it provided.

We can plan and discuss forever or we can prototype and innovate (often called agile development in the software world) around our most promising ideas.  Which would you prefer?  Can we make Charleston the first agile city?